


What's In A Name?

by nerulean



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dedue Molinaro Needs a Hug, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd Needs a Hug, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Tragedy of Duscur (Fire Emblem), Trauma, like really slow burn it's basically platonic rn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22994209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerulean/pseuds/nerulean
Summary: Dedue's world collapses around him in fire and blood, and in the middle of it he finds someone new to bind his life to. But can a friendship forged in torment be good for them, and how will the difference in their stations affect Dedue and Dimitri?
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Dedue Molinaro, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	What's In A Name?

Dedue sees his father cut down before him, the rush of red, the tangle of steel in tendon and bone. He hears himself cry out, a horrible, animal wail. He tastes bile and an emptiness that rushes up from his chest and fills his throat and threatens to choke him. There’s smoke in the village. Screaming. The barking of dogs and the barking of men, and chaos, chaos everywhere.

He doesn't know what's happening. Doesn't know who these people are, or why they're attacking. All he knows is that his father is dead, and his mother and sister were out in the marketplace where the fires burn fiercest, and the village that is home to everyone he cares about is being torn down around them. The shouts and whoops he hears are Faerghus-accented while the whimpers and pleading are in the cadence of Duscur, and the sounds of his people are slowly dying out.

His hands curl into fists, unbidden. He’s grown so much lately, his mother says. Said. He doesn’t know his own strength. He’ll use it now, against these strangers in their shining armour who have destroyed everything, everyone important to him. They will kill him, like they killed his father, but there’s no reason left for him to live. Let him at least follow the people he loves to his death with his head high. Let him launch himself at their attackers. 

Any second now.

He longs to charge, but his legs won’t obey him, feeling like they’re made of lead and air at once. His lungs are clutching against nothing, his nostrils flaring, his hands clenching and unclenching, and the soldiers advance, but in the heat of it all he can’t make himself move. The frontmost soldier raises his sword high, still dripping with his father's blood, and he feels his heart pounding through his chest, but his body won’t budge. He realises numbly that he has no choice in any part of how he will meet his end, and when he finally does move it’s only to crumple to his knees.

"Stop!"

The voice is high and clear like a youth's, but it isn’t anyone he recognises from the village, and he realises with a peculiar sluggishness that word was spoken by a person of Faerghus, though every other voice speaking with that accent today has been calling for death. There’s the sound of a struggle at the rear of the group of soldiers. 

The man closest to him snarls and, with the same strange sense that time is passing too slowly, Dedue sees the bright blade slash down towards his neck. If he had control of himself he could move, could dodge away, but there’s no reason to evade. Death has claimed everything already. To remain would be only to suffer. He is ready to die. 

But somehow, as the blade falls, it doesn’t bite his flesh. He hears a howl of pain, but it’s not his own. The soldiers are backing away. There’s a thud of metal hitting the ground. Dedue realises that someone else is standing there, between himself and the men in armour, eyes wide with shock. A boy close to his own age, his skin milk-pale and marked with burns and pocked with dry blood, hair a cascade of bright gold, a vivid gash of red marring the dark blue of his tunic across his back. Where he took the blow that should have killed Dedue.

"You will not hurt him!" The boy screams to the men behind him, his voice ragged. The eyes of the soldier who struck him show horror. There’s movement in the group. One of them leaves, perhaps. Another puts his hand on his former leader's shoulder. But Dedue barely notices. The fair boy has turned back towards him, growing whiter by the second as blood drains from his wound, but his icy gaze does not waver, and nor does the slender hand he offers out. "You'll be safe with me. I am-" there is just a moment's hesitation, "Dimitri."

Dimitri. 

Though the syllables are no more than air and the memory of sound the moment they’re spoken, that name seems like the only solid thing in Dedue's world. Everything is gone. His world is fire. His family, ash. But this golden haired boy stood in front of steel to save him at the moment when he’d known deep in his heart that there was nothing pure left anywhere in the world, and suddenly, in the midst of the inferno of grief and misery and pain that rages through him, Dimitri shines out to Dedue as all the good that’s left, all the good that there could ever be. Perhaps this one bright light is reason enough to go on, if only to defend it against the darkness.

He reaches to take Dimitri's hand. 

The boy's skin is pale as paper, colder than it should be, clammy, but his grip is impossibly strong. The pain of it is reassuringly real. "I am Dedue," he murmurs.

"Dedue…" As he repeats the name, a smile settles across Dimitri's features that seems somehow to match Dedue's own desperation, and a light begins to shine forth from his pale skin and hair and eyes. It takes an embarrassingly long time for Dedue to realise that the glow is healing magic cast from afar and not some blessing inherent to Dimitri, but for the briefest of moments all he can see is that golden boy, radiant before him.

\---

Dimitri clings to Dedue's hand. He refuses to let go as soldiers hurry him to a tent with the healer at his side. He holds tight as a man with a loud voice insists that Dimitri be put in a carriage and taken away and the healer softly refuses because the drive might endanger his life. He clutches so tightly that Dedue thinks he might break bone when the loud-voiced man tries to separate them, and this time Dedue is certain some power really is emanating from him. It isn't light, nor visible at all, but there's a sudden sense of immeasurable strength behind Dimitri’s words that makes the man flinch. In the cold haze of all the horror that has befallen him Dedue barely hears what he says, but whatever it is sends the man away, and the healer gets to work tending to the great tear in his back with magic and salves and bandages. Dedue simply watches and keeps hold of Dimitri's hand, sitting out of the way on the floor beside the low, ornately carved bed.

It takes a long while after the healer leaves for Dedue to realise they’re alone, that Dimitri has sat up and is talking to him, and the noise of blood rushing in his ears slowly calms enough to let him hear what he is saying “- mean it. I won’t let them take you away from me.” 

He nods, mutely. The last hour of his life feels it’s lasted a century and he’s lost in the whirlwind of it, the pain and death. He keeps seeing his father's blood splattering as his neck is cleaved in two, sees it running down steel that’s raised over his own head as he kneels and can’t muster the strength to fight for his life. He doesn't know what has happened. He doesn't know why. He doesn't know who this boy who took a mortal blow for him is, or why he cows the soldiers so. He doesn't know why Dimitri's voice shakes when he speaks.

"They'll listen. They have to. I'm the prince. Or… now…" he trails off and Dedue watches his expression twist into confusion and, more than that, a hollow pain that Dedue knows could be a mirror of his own expression. He still doesn't trust his voice, so he squeezes Dimitri's hand to let him know that he sees him, that he understands, and Dimitri's bright eyes widen in something like wonder. For just a moment, a connection rings out between them, unspoken, forged in a grief too deep for words. They understand each other, but perhaps Dimitri sees Dedue's complete lack of understanding of his situation. He draws a long, shaking breath to explain.

"My full name is Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. I-" he seems to hesitate, then plunges forth, "I should be next in line to the throne of Faerghus, but… but my father was killed, along with my stepmother, my best friend, everyone-" His voice breaks into a pained sob and Dedue can't keep himself from reaching out his other hand for Dimitri's, feeling his own anguish rising in tandem though still muffled as if it is beyond a distant haze. "Our carriages were attacked. Everyone is blaming Duscur, but I know it wasn't your people. I'll stop them, this awful revenge-" he chokes out the word, "I'll stop them. They'll have to listen to me, I- I'll be king…"

It's all so much, so far beyond Dedue's compression. King? The throne of Faerghus? He can't quite fit that information through the fog of pain. But the loss in Dimitri reaches out to the loss in his own heart, and he finds himself struggling to give voice to the terrible admission of the end of the life he once had, if only to strain for something new here with this strange, sweet soul. "My father died, my mother and my sister… I would have too, but you- you saved me… Everything else is- is gone…"

"Dedue…" Dimitri whispers, and there’s such agony in his eyes that Dedue can't help but be drawn to them, to him. He squeezes Dimitri's hands again to let him know he's there, listening, and Dimitri draws a breath as if to speak, but no more words come out. Instead, he lifts his hands ever so slightly and tilts his head to the space next to him on the bed in unspoken invitation.

Stiffly, feeling his too-long limbs complain against the cold, the adrenaline, the cursed pain of continuing to live and grow when his whole family is dead, Dedue rises and falls until the thin mattress creaks under his weight and the wooden frame bows just slightly, inching the two boys closer. For a moment he looks at their linked hands, and then he feels Dimitri leaning into his shoulder, his golden head resting against the dark soot and blood stains on Dedue's worn tunic, his warmth mingling with Dedue's own.

Somehow, somehow in this world of death and fire where everything he cares about has been torn away, there is one bright strand of connection left to him, fragile and new. "Dimitri…" he murmurs, and the boy looks up, but he has no idea how to follow that or what he meant to say. He gives a helpless shrug, more a gesture of his lips and brow than of his shoulders, and Dimitri meets his eyes and gives the tiniest of nods. He knows. He understands: everything is broken. 

No words can express it, so they don't speak, simply sit together as darkness draws in, holding each other’s hands, trying to comprehend what they've lost and how life can possibly continue when it lies in such tatters. Dimitri's eyes water in a constant, silent stream, his small body shaking as if he is cold. Dedue is dry-eyed, still except when huge tremors wrack his chest for a moment before subsiding. Neither of them is truly there, but nor do they have anywhere else to go, and so they simply sit with their sorrow and with each other, heedless of the passage of time.

\---

Dedue wakes slowly at first, then all at once, sitting up stiffly. He has no idea what happened the evening before nor how he could have slept with his heart pounding like this, his limbs tense and shaking, his chest feeling at once hollow and full of boiling oil. It doesn’t seem like he’s rested at all. He aches to stand, to make himself busy and burn off some of this feeling, but he doesn't yet trust his limbs to support him.

He's in a tent, but not a patterned and colourful one like he's slept in when he goes to gatherings with his family, cosy and warm and joyous. The walls of this one glow stark white in the sun, and the drapes are all the same austere silver and dark blue, all bear the same image of a griffin. He wonders where his family's tent is, and suddenly it hits him again, everything that happened. 

The tent is gone. His family is gone. His whole village is gone, except for him. He wants to howl and wail and rage, but he can't summon the sound, can't summon the energy. A hurricane of grief threatens to overwhelm him, but even that seems too much, too hard to go near. It’s everything he is, but somehow he barely feels it, like he's hearing it through a thick curtain. 

But while everything inside him is numb, everything outside is too loud, too sharp. He can hear movement just beyond the tent, a creaking of leather and metal, the rustle of fabric. Two silhouettes give outline to men there, with spears held at attention. Guarding him. Those sounds are echoed hundreds of times out into the distance, cut with gruff voices giving orders, the dull thud of hooves striking the ground, ringing hammer blows. But in the midst of it all, as clear as if he was standing right next to him…

"You have to stop this! It wasn't them! They didn't do it!"

Dimitri's voice. That finally stirs Dedue to motion. He needs to find him. Now. He can't hear the answer, only the boy's voice again, piercing and angry.

"I know what I saw! Don't tell me I'm crazy. I'm the only one who witnessed the attack and I demand you listen-"

He's cut off. Has something happened? Dedue's on his feet, looking for something sharp to cut his way through the tent walls so he won't be slowed by the soldiers when he hears Dimitri’s anguished wail.

"No!" 

It's too much. He can't wait. Surprise will have to do. Where he couldn’t move to save himself, for his new friend he finds his strength and charges towards the entrance, breaking out into too-bright sunlight and the sound of marching, getting a step toward the source of the voice before the soldiers recover from the shock of the unexpected rush and try to stop him. 

He's unarmed but they're too close for their weapons to help, so it's a grapple, a confusion of fists and arms and feet, the soldiers trying to drag or beat him down, Dedue trying to force his way free. "Dimitri!" he bellows, taken aback by the volume of his own voice that’s so seldom raised, surprised at the pain and need in it. 

He's as tall as either soldier and maybe as strong, but there are two of them and they know their own size better, and while their armour slows them down their steel gauntlets make every blow count double. He knows he's losing. He can feel blood running down his face, and perhaps something is broken in his side. He doesn't know what. His second call is weaker. "Dimitri…"

He doesn’t know how long it is before the response comes.

"Unhand him this instant!" The ranks of soldiers marching past crumble and split as Dimitri bursts through from their midsts. "He is under my protection. How dare you-"

"Your Highness, he was trying to escape-"

"I was looking for you." A loose, painful cough rattles through Dedue as he tries to get the words out, but he can see a flare of something in Dimitri's eyes. Rage? Anguish? Both?

"Let him go." Dimitri's voice is cold, shaking with restrained violence, and that powerful strength flares up in him again. The hands on Dedue's arms and across his chest fall nervously away and he rushes up to cover the ground between him and Dimitri in a single surge of movement, oblivious to the pain in his body. Dimitri holds his hand out and Dedue takes it, and the blood from his scraped knuckles drips onto both their skin. The grip of those slender fingers is crushing, stronger than any hold the guards had on him, and Dedue holds tighter in response.

Dedue looks at Dedue for a moment, then turns his icy eyes back to the men who had tried to stop him. "Leave." The word rings with an implacable authority, and the grown men grab their spears and flee from this terrifying, diminutive boy. His back straight, his stride stuff, Dimitri walks towards the tent amidst a hushed stillness, his booted footsteps the only sound besides Dedue's sandaled scuffling as he follows along behind.

As soon as the tent flaps close behind them, everything about Dimitri changes. His vice grip becomes weak, barely clinging to Dedue's fingers. His shoulders hunch and shake. He seems hardly able to hold himself upright and Dedue gasps and ducks to bring his shoulder below Dimitri's to support him, ignoring the pain that sings out from his own ribs as he guides Dimitri's halting steps towards the griffin-carved bed that someone must have carried all the way from Faerghus. 

It creaks beneath their combined weight as they fall ungracefully onto it, and Dedue backs out of contact with Dimitri immediately, not wanting to aggravate the injuries that criss-cross his slim frame. Dimitri whines involuntarily and follows the movement, his brow furrowing in pain as Dedue tries to distance himself, and suddenly he sees that need to be close, that fear of rejection, of being alone, and knows it must be worse than the physical hurt of his injuries. Dedue feels it as if it is his own, even as he pushes the ache of his own many wounds away, and he stills, moves back.

"Dedue… I'm so sorry… I couldn't stop them…" Dimitri's breath is ragged, flecked with water, his eyes red and swollen and threatening tears again.

"I will heal," Dedue finds himself saying, his voice quiet. His injuries seem far away, like everything else except the rawness of the boy beside him.

"No…" Dimitri shakes his head, but the words aren't a refutation, Dedue realises slowly. He's missed something. His brows draw down into a stony expression, guarding himself as Dimitri's voice rises from a fearful whisper to an agonised wail. "I couldn't stop them. The army will march on through Duscur and they'll keep burning and killing and I couldn't stop them…"

It feels like a blow to Dedue's chest, knocking all the air out of him. He tries to breathe but his throat is closed. "N-no…" It's a choked, voiceless wail, so small against the enormity of what he's heard. Of course Dimitri couldn't stop this army. Nothing can. Nothing will. Duscur has no legions of knights to stand against these marauding invaders and so there will not even be a battle, just a rolling slaughter until the army of Faerghus gets bored and goes home. Never mind that they are avenging a crime that was not committed by any Duscur hand. Never mind that they will burn communities, murder families, strip the heart of a whole people, in their misplaced vengeance.

The arrogance, the cruelty, the power-drunk self-importance of it makes Dedue sick with a nausea that threatens to overwhelm him, and an anger that makes him want to go back outside and fight every soldier there himself. His eyes cloud as the battle between capitulation and action rages inside him, but it isn't a decision he has any power to make: they are two tides that claw at him like a piece of driftwood in a storm. 

He’s frozen again, and again he doesn’t break out of it himself.

He feels a pressure against his chest, something real, something warm. With great effort he lowers his head and clears his eyes to see what it is that's touching him, and there’s that pale hand once more, steadying him. He must have been shaking.

“Dedue… Forgive me. I will try and try again, I will do anything…"

He can see the earnestness in Dimitri's eyes, the sheen of tears there, and he believes that this good-hearted person truly means his words, but he can’t believe that he’ll be able to succeed. He shakes his head. “Will they listen now, if they did not before?" 

Dimitri responds like he's been kicked, angry, betrayed, frustrated, and Dedue flinches and reaches for him, as conciliatory as he can be. The sight of blood on his fingers deflates Dimitri's passion as quickly as it arises, Dedue’s injuries at his own soldier’s hands testament to what little regard they have for the orders of their next king, young as he is. "No…" he whispers through quavering breath.

He stands abruptly, walking away, and Dedue fears he’s pushed too far, spends an agonising moment wondering if he should rise to follow, when Dimitri turns back again with his wash basin and a cloth in his hands. "I- I'm sorry, Dedue. I couldn't save your family, or mine. I can't save your people…"

The look of anguish on his face goes through Dedue with a shudder, that powerlessness and sorrow so redolent in his own heart. He longs to do anything he can to lessen it, anything at all, and he finds, surprisingly, that there is one minutely small thing he can offer. "You saved me."

A long, slow blink gently lowers Dimitri's golden lashes, and those eyes of shining blue meet Dedue’s with a glimmer of frail and desperate hope. Dimitri kneels by the bed, sets the wash basin down next to him, and reaches for Dedue's hand, which he carefully gives. He watches with a distant fascination as this finely dressed boy, this future king, laves his bloodied knuckles in water with the cloth, then reaches up tenderly to do the same to a split in his scalp that Dedue hadn’t noticed.

Dimitri's motions are slow, meditative, penitent, and his eyes aren’t entirely on Dedue as he works, but that long stretch of quiet and contact is something they both dearly need. Their breathing levels out, starts to fall in unison, and when he has removed as much of the signs of his soldiers' mistreatment as he can Dimitri looks up at Dedue, small and vulnerable. "I won't stop trying. I'll find something I can do to help your people, I promise. I swear it to you, Dedue."

Dedue feels his throat grow thick at that, a prick of heat behind his eyes, and though he doesn't entirely trust his voice he knows he must reply, he must meet that pure-hearted pledge with the recognition and encouragement and accountability it deserves. "I thank you. And-" his speech stumbles, but his eyes on Dimitri don’t, "and I will do anything I can to help you see it through."

"Will you stay with me?" Dimitri whispers, and his imploring expression enraptures Dedue, that need drawing him in like a moth to a lantern.

"Yes,” His own voice surprises him with a warm, solid conviction when everything else inside him feels so hollow. “For as long as I am able."

"Do you promise?" Dimitri looks so lost, so uncertain, but Dedue already knows that there’s nothing left anywhere in the world that could drag him away from this earnest, noble, beautiful boy who sees the wrong his people are doing and is so overtaken by a need to fix it. That is someone he longs to be near. That is a cause he will give every remaining breath he has for. That is what his life will be now, when there is nothing else left to him. 

He lowers his head in a slow, solemn nod.

"I swear it, Dimitri."

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfic I've written in about a million years, but dangit Dimitri and Dedue both deserve more time to wallow in their respective trauma and codependence than the game gives them.
> 
> This first chapter is pretty white-saviour-y, but like 80% of my reason for writing this is to chart Dedue's growth into his own identity so we're going to get to the juicy racial justice bits later.
> 
> Also, help a girl out finding the FE3H community - where do I go to chat to you all?


End file.
